And the intermediate list: Captain Phillips, Prisoners, Spring Breakers, 12 Years a Slave, The Wolf of Wall Street

Realistically, we have three locks here: Captain Phillips, Spring Breakers, and 12 Years a Slave.

The Wolf of Wall Street should be a lock–those three hours move by beautifully–but hold on.

Upstream Color really ought to be on as well. So we could go with my initial list and be done with it. But then there’s the matter of Prisoners, which carefully creates a very deliberate pace, which I appreciate (it’s common in European cinema, but it’s fairly rare in American cinema)–and, well-edited though Wolf is…does it need to be there?

As for the longlist, I’m not even going to bother with it. All good editing jobs, but the only one I’d even consider slotting on would be Side Effects, and that’s a pretty long shot. So I won’t even confuse the issue.

So, based on a partial (very partial) rewatch of Prisoners, I’ve decided to stick with Wolf. Thelma Schoonmaker is a legend for a reason. I’m keeping Prisoners as my 6th place entry, pending a full rewatch (which I really need to do, especially because I want to re-evaluate it for the acting and writing categories).

I’m pretty happy with this category, though. One thriller, one historical film (which really trucks along), a Scorsese, a Korine, and an experimental film. A nice little motley crew.